


Oh, let us sin (show remorse and heal within)

by Marenke



Series: sea of bitterness [4]
Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Historical, Historical Figures, Historical Inaccuracy, in....... a way.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marenke/pseuds/Marenke
Summary: She made a graceful bow to Aimée, who did the same as the nun left them to their own devices. Outside, the world was brought to a standstill, birds chirping suddenly silent as they stared at each other, matching grins in their faces.“Just call me Mimi, it’s… Easier.” She tried, slipping into Italian at first and then changing into a hurried French. Aimée seemed to understand her, though, and nodded.“Aimée, then.”





	Oh, let us sin (show remorse and heal within)

**Author's Note:**

> this is more of like. original work than actual historical rpf but ya kno how it is. would like to thank everyone who i proposed this idea and they said "do it"  
cant wait to get sued by the de buc's sneezing emoji

**1779**

Mimi met Aimée pretty soon into her life: they’re both eleven, daughters of French blood, and new to the convent school they’ve been sent to. Aimée hailed from Martinica, distant and tropical, the climate written in the tan of her skin and the freckles that pop on the bridge of her nose; Mimi, meanwhile, was from Corsica, daughter of a small island only recently annexed to France; even then, barely. Both of them had a terrible French - Aimée's was full of the twists and turns of creole, while Mimi had just started to learn it, too accustomed to her natal Italian. To put plainly: the nuns could not understand them, both too accustomed to a different speech to be understandable. 

Mimi, who stared at this stranger with doe eyes and a gap tooth smile, looked at her and felt a burning pain in her chest, lungs full of water and smoke, and smiled back. This was love at first sight, wasn’t it? Her parents were big believers on such a concept, and taught Mimi its signs ever since she could recall, taught her to trust her instincts and to follow what she wanted. The church wouldn’t be pleased that it was a woman Mimi loved, but Corsica was so distant from the world she was sure no one would pay any mind to them.

She made a graceful bow to Aimée, who did the same as the nun left them to their own devices. Outside, the world was brought to a standstill, birds chirping suddenly silent as they stared at each other, matching grins in their faces.

“Just call me Mimi, it’s… Easier.” She tried, slipping into Italian at first and then changing into a hurried French. Aimée seemed to understand her, though, and nodded.

“Aimée, then.”

* * *

They were like gunpowder and fire together, which is to say: a menace. Both of them eventually learned prim and proper French, but in the meantime they invented a language all for themselves, full of Mimi’s Italian accent and the turn of tongues from Aimée’s French Creole. 

The nuns didn’t find it as amusing as they did, giggling between themselves while reading from the bible, sounding out words to make sense of it and failing to do so; their hands met the switch until it bruised and they learned to keep it between themselves.

All the better, really. Aimée and Mimi just learned to stay silent in the library and speak in French in front of others, but at night they whispered in their made up language, unable to sleep because of the climate - both of them, perpetually cold: their island homes a temperature hotter, scalding hot, than the actual cold weather of Nantes. It already had been half a year, but they still hadn’t grown used to the cold.

“Aimée,” Whined Mimi in their shared tongue, clutching the scratchy blanket that the nuns claimed was good for the soul. Luxuries in the kingdom of Heaven and stuff like that, things Mimi couldn’t care because her blanket was scratchy and uncomfortable for a girl accustomed to the softer things in life. “Can I sleep in your bed tonight?”

Aimée turned in bed, sitting up. The moon, peeking from between the clouds (promising snow; Mimi already loathed them) allowed her to see Aimée’s face, sleepy, her freckles faded and skin pale. 

“Again?”

“I’m cold.” Mimi replied, and Aimée nodded, opening up space in bed, laying down with her back to the wall, inviting her in. Mimi accepted it, sliding into the bed, covering them both with her extra blanket, and snuggling into Aimée. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Aimée yawned. The shared warmth was comforting, at least, and soon enough Mimi fell asleep, dreaming of fires and war.

They had only known each other for a few months, but it felt like a lifetime._ Maybe it was the loneliness_, Mimi told herself, but her heart allowed no lies. This was love; she refused to name it any other way.

* * *

**1783**

The two walked down the corridors of the convent, passing by nuns and other students. Mimi was carrying Aimée’s books, the girl herself reading aloud a passage from a letter from her family, a mocking tone in her voice.

“...We miss you so much, dearest child, and we long for your education to be over so you can return…” Aimée sneered at the letter, crumpling it into a ball, their shared language a whisper full of venom. “By God, if they missed me so much, then why didn’t they let me stay in Fort-Royal?”

“But how else was I supposed to meet you?” Mimi joked, and that made Aimée’s smile show, the gap in her teeth long gone. Turning to her, Aimée stretched, ignoring the glares other students and nuns sent their way as they walked, too close for comfort. Mimi knew they’d be getting the switch later, but she didn’t care.

Aimée made it worth the pain.

“You could’ve come to Martinique.” There was a musicality in her voice, returned to its French Creole origins, every time she spoke about her homeland. “My cousin, Josephine, lived there, you know. We even went…”

Voice lowered, Aimée leaned in, close enough for Mimi to feel the heat of her body.

“To a fortune teller, once.” Taboo, dripping from her tongue: if the nuns heard it, she’d be branded a heretic and sent home in shame. Mimi raised an eyebrow at that.

“And what did she say?”

Aimée shrugged, looking around the gardens to see if they were being heard. Snow fell in gentle flakes, but they were already used to the cold - although, on some days, Mimi slid into Aimée’s bed, burying herself into the comforting heat of the other girl.

“She said that we’d both be at the head of great empires. Cousin Josephine made it to a good husband, but I don’t see how I’m supposed to do it. Shall I steal her husband? Perhaps he’ll be king!” She cracked another smile, and the light bathed her in such a way Mimi was breathless, seeing the ghost of the freckles that once were there. 

God was unjust on making her so beautiful and a woman. Or maybe He had done so to punish Mimi, to make her long for someone she could never marry, never call hers fully.

“Corsica was a kingdom, once. You should join the rebels that want it back and become its queen.” Mimi half joked, and Aimée laughed, distracting and beautiful. 

“Geez, isn’t it easier for me to marry you?” Aimée walked a few steps forward, walking backwards, hands clasped together at her back as she carefully stepped without seeing what was to come. “Can you imagine a joining of our noble families?”

“Aimée Cesari does sound pretty.” Mimi wasn’t joking; her surname on Aimée’s name would be a dream come true. Unfortunately, it was far-fetched; unless they joined the convent, they’d be separated as soon as their educations were over, both being married off like cattle to the highest bidder, never to see one another again, only letters between them. “Come to Corsica with me, fair lady, and let us realize our dreams!”

Aimée laughed, loud, unladylike, going to say something that never came - she hit a nun, and Mimi bit her tongue to not say anything as Aimée looked up, seeing the nun’s stern face to have caught them speaking in their forbidden language.

“Shall I bother the two ladies to ask for a switch?” The nun said, a terrifying smile in her face as her words in pure, undiluted French fell like snow around them.

* * *

**1784**

“I’m cold, Aimée.” Complained Mimi, stuck in her bed, a high fever making its course through her body. Aimée looked at her with badly hidden panic in her dark eyes, taking away a sweat-soaked strand of pale, coarse hair from Mimi’s face. 

It was Mimi’s own fault she was sick. Instead of being a good lady of high standing and staying inside, like Aimée had pleaded her to, she had gone outside to play in the snow with other girls, like the child she felt she was. Now, she paid its price.

“I’ll put another blanket on, Mimi.” Aimée said, voice soft. She rose from her seat on the ground, grabbing the rough blanket from her bed and carefully putting it atop Mimi, checking in the soaked towel that had been put on her forehead, and hissing when she found it warm. “My God, you’re burning alive.”

“If I were, at least I’d be warm.” Mimi replied, eyes closing on their own volition as she felt Aimée’s soft hands change the towel, refreshing it with melted snow water. The nuns had refused to give her care, and Mimi refused to beg for help from them. “Join me to sleep?”

It had been a while since they’d last slept together: a surprise inspection from the nuns had broken the habit pretty quickly, and while the nights felt longer and colder, they had been under watch, everyone aware of the bruises coating their hands like a second skin, welts within welts red and angry. Mimi opened dark eyes, looking at Aimée, mid motion to twist the towel.

Aimée’s eyes hesitated, and Mimi gave her a dry laugh. Of course she’d be rejected; why would Aimée accept her? That had been what drove her to the snow, playing and screaming loudly to burrow her sorrows: Aimée had received a marriage proposal, commenting it with Mimi, mentioning something about accepting the offer, something or another about powerful men. 

Her feelings had been obviously hurt - to be so in love with someone who you could never have; was there another pain that was such a stab to her heart, impossible to drown out? 

No. There wasn’t. Her body ached in unison with her body, low, drawn out, unforgettable. Why was a prophecy from some false fortune teller more important than what was real and right by her side? 

“Forget about it.” Mimi muttered, turning to face the wall, unsure if the heat she felt in her eyes was the fever or the tears that threatened to spill.

She heard nothing for what seemed like a long while, until she felt the covers being risen and a warm body sliding to her side, arms closing around Mimi, who gasped. She turned, too close to Aimée for comfort.

“Aimée?” She murmured, breath uncomfortably warm. Aimée seemed embarrassed, but stubborn to the commitment she was making. “I am sorry, I didn’t mean to…”

“I understand you have… Feelings for me.” Aimée started, and the blush Mimi had on had nothing to do with her running fever. “I do. And I also get that… Talking about marriage for myself is a sore spot with you. But… I have to do what’s best for my family. It’s not realistic for two women to...”

Aimée bit her lower lip, as if trying to convince herself of the words she spoke. Mimi shook her head, licking chapped lips before kissing her chastely on the lips, soft and too quiet.

Aimée separated after a moment, brown eyes huge and shocked. 

“God is watching,” She said, and it felt familiar: a stranger’s words in a familiar tongue. Maybe a repeat of everything the nuns had ever said, Mimi reasoned to herself, trying to find logic. “God...”

“And what does God care about two girls who are no ones?” Mimi retorted, and that softened Aimée’s expression. “Please, Aimée. At least until our education is over, let me have you and I’ll be yours, fully. After that, you can forget me.”

A pause, long enough to last a lifetime. And then -

“Okay.” She said, nodding minimally, almost inaudible. “I’ll be yours forever in heart, then.”

Mimi smiled, and then Aimée kissed her forehead, before making a disgusted face at the taste of sweat.

“Maybe we should start this after you aren’t sick…” She mused, and Mimi laughed, which made Aimée laugh as well.

* * *

**1785**

Aimée had been distracted the entire day, staring off through the window. Mimi knew nothing had happened: no letters had come yet, since the answer to the latest one had been sent a few days ago, and it would be some time before they reached Martinique and came back.

“What’s wrong?” Mimi asked, as they got ready for bed, changing into night shifts. Aimée stared out at the window, and Mimi’s voice brought her back to reality, her breath making smokescreens against the night sky. “You’ve been out of it the entire day.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…” She waved, vague, at the outside world, away from their room, away from the nunnery they studied at. “I feel like something important happened and I’m just… Unaware of it yet.”

Mimi cocked her head, and she watched as Aimée pondered something, dark eyes going back to the outside.

“What could it be? Oh, I know!” Mimi feigned surprise, her hair jumping with her, loose and wild. Aimée’s eyes were directed to her, curiosity peering into them. “Maybe your Emperor husband-to-be was just born?”

Aimée laughed, crystalline and honest, making Mimi grin widely.

“I’d be an old maid when he came of a marriageable age!” Aimée doubled over with laughter, grabbing at her stomach. “God, can you imagine? Me, thirty-something, and a boy half my age? He could be my child!”

She laughed to the point of falling squarely into the ground, and after a brief pause, resumed laughing, Mimi approaching her to help Aimée up. A bang from the next room over stopped them, and then Mimi joined her in the laughter, helping her up nonetheless.

“Alright, alright.” She cleaned the tears that had sprung up in the corner of her eyes, one hand still in Mimi’s own. “So maybe my future Emperor husband wasn’t born today, but I still feel like something important happened.”

“Deja vu?” Mimi suggested, and Aimée scrunched her nose. “I’m almost certain I used that word right.”

“I don’t know enough French to be certain…” With a sigh, Aimée kissed Mimi, who giggled against her mouth. “Let’s go to bed, shall we? The nuns said that tomorrow there will be a sunrise prayer.”

“No!” She moaned, and Aimée giggled as their hands clasped.

* * *

**1788**

Aimée received a letter from her family, and so did Mimi. Aimée ripped her apart after reading it, and Mimi just felt like burying herself alive, stomach doing loops and turns she thought impossible. 

“They - they want me to come back!” Aimée said, furious, pieces of paper raining down on the ground. “Because of some stupid political strife! Please, my family has been raised into political strife, it has killed no one!”

“My family, meanwhile, wants me to stay here.” She laughed, bitter. All those years, they had never sent her a letter to return to Corsica, to come home to the shores she called her motherland; now that her education was a year from being finished, they told her to stay in Nantes or go to Paris and find a husband, or maybe to Court, but that would require an introduction they didn’t have.

She didn’t want a husband, Nantes or Paris; she wanted Aimée and Corsica, her warm homeland and the love of her life by her side. The thought of marrying not for love but for money revolted her stomach, and all Mimi wanted to do was curl up in a ball and die. Instead, all she did was lay in her bed, blonde-ish hair covering her eyes like a veil, giving the world a soft, ethereal quality it did not deserve at the moment; no, it deserved gray tones and soft music.

“I - I will not go. Not on their terms. Never. I’m not abandoning you.” Aimée said, and Mimi rose her eyes to her, empty. As if Aimée would abandon the fortuneteller’s words. She was probably saying that out of sheer despair at being ordered around like a puppet.

“You should.” Aimée opened her mouth and closed, fish-like. “You always told me that this - this romance of ours - would only last as long we were here. If your parents want you out of here, then you should go, else they drag you by the hair.” 

Aimée seemed broken hearted. Mimi was, as well, and maybe she was just lashing out, trying to see if Aimée would be like her parents and send her away or fight for her.

She knew the answer deep inside, though. The fortune teller’s words weighted more than hers.

“You’re… You’re right.” Aimée said, sitting down in Mimi’s bed, shaken. She picked up Mimi’s hair, pushing it away from her face. “You should go to Corsica, too. For safety. Maybe they’re right.”

The idea doesn’t sound half-bad, but with what money? Her parents paid for education, and that was it; there wasn’t much to spare.

Aimee's face lit up, and she smiled, bright.

"Or you could come to Martinique with me. We could stay together while this entire thing blows over, and then… Come back, and be together forever."

Mimi blinked quickly, rising, her hands still on Aimée’s, soft and quiet, the world gaining color.

"But I thought…" 

"Cousin Josephine is married to some nobody whose only importance is his riches. The fortune teller was wrong." She sneered, and Mimi blinked once more. "We will be together. I will make sure of it, my love. Come to Martinique with me."

Mimi's smile could've encompassed the entire world, and she crashed her lips against Aimée's, hands pulling the other girl closer, teeth clashing for a passionate moment until she let go.

Then, staring at each other's eyes, they kissed again, slower, kinder: they had all the time in the world.

* * *

Water splashed around the hull of their new ship - a Spaniard one, the one they were in before shipwrecked near the coast of Coruña, rescued before the waters claimed their lives -, and Mimi couldn’t sleep. Anxiety stabbed her mind, sitting on the bed she shared with Aimée, who slept peacefully, nested against her. Mimi patted her head carefully, fingers entrenched on the dark hair she was so familiar with.

There was something in the air, something Mimi couldn’t identify. Maybe it was just seasickness, but as rational as her thought process was, it just didn’t sit right with her. 

She heard a commotion coming from upstairs, and stared at the roof, her anxiety spiking to an impossibly high level as she rose from bed, putting a shawl over her shoulders and trying to rise Aimée from sleep, shaking her softly, growing restless as the sounds grew and the screaming started.

Aimée rose to the sounds of gunshots, eyes wild and huge.

“What is happening?” She mumbled, still half-asleep. The sound of a shot made them both cringe, Aimée’s eyes waking up in recognition of what was happening. “Oh, God…”

“I don’t know. I don’t know!” Mimi repeated, hands wringing through her hair, pulling out strands. She crumpled to the ground, defeated. “I fear the worse, our luck has ran out, I, I…”

Aimée rose from the bed, joining her on the floor, hands on her covered shoulders. Aimée’s touch was warm, burning her skin. She opened her mouth to say something, and then the screaming started once more, approaching, the laughter of men accompanying, screams in a language they didn’t recognize, and a shudder coursed through Mimi’s body.

“I love you.” Mimi said, eyes focused on Aimée’s. “I love you, I love you, I…”

A scream tore from Aimée’s throat as their door was blown from its hinges, and Mimi looked back, a gasp leaving her mouth as pirates stared at them, speaking in some foreign language that was alien to the two of them.

One man took Aimée, another took Mimi, Aimée in a dead shock, frozen by fear, while Mimi screamed and kicked, tearing at the man holding her like she was a sack of potatoes. Her nails were useless against the clothes he wore, making no effect on him, seemingly.

“Aimée! Aimée!” She yelled, trying to reach for the girl as the men took them to their own ship, the night chilly and cold. 

“Miriam!” Aimée using her real name instead of the nickname they had established no many years ago broke Mimi’s heart, giving her the strength she needed to rebel, swinging her body and grinning when he started to sway. Using some momentum, she kicked the man’s stomach, forceful enough to make him double over, losing his grip on her body.

Unfortunately for her, it was in the brief passage between the two ships, and Mimi hit her lower jaw on the plank, more stars in her eyes than in the sky above as she fell towards the water, hands trying to grasp at anything and only succeeding at breaking her nails.

She clawed at the hull of the ship, panicking; Mimi had never been taught how to swim, her parents deeming it a too low class activity while there was peace, and then too dangerous to go outside to the lake. 

Salt water stung at the recently made wounds in her fingers as she screamed, kicking the water, panicking and exhausting herself, the nightgown dragging her into the murky depths below, below, water stinging her eyes and burning her lungs.

Mimi did not see the pirate ship leave: she was already underwater.

* * *

**1795**

Aimée stared through the window to a city that she would never know; the doors to the seraglio had closed to her a long time ago, locking her inside its walls. Her name wasn’t even Aimée anymore - her buyer had given her another, more appropriate: Nakşidil, but she refused to refer herself as such. She’d always be Aimée, inside.

“Mother, is there something wrong?” Called the boy, no more than ten years old, they had given for her to raise. The other concubines said it was an honor for her, but she knew that they meant it to be a curse.

No problem. Aimée would raise the kid, and he’d avenge her. She’d have all concubines who laughed at her mistakes in Persian and taught her wrong, shoddy false pronunciation to make her be publically corrected. Anger had been burning its embers in her chest ever since that night seven years ago, and time only made the fire grow.

“No, Mahmud.” Aimée sighed, eyes tearing away from the windows, to the boy who studied French (not the language she spoke with Mimi; no, that one was buried in the ocean, resting atop a pile of bones). Aimée knew he was teaching it to his brother, but it wasn’t up to her to tell him what to do in his free time. She was aware it would reach her husband’s ears soon, and when it did, she hoped it picked his interest; and when it did, Aimée would sink her claws unto him and claim what was rightfully hers.

A snarl formed itself in her face, and she looked again to the window, hoping Mahmud hadn’t seen it.

The fortune teller had been right, after all; she was married to a powerful man, but she wasn’t at its head. Not yet. She eyed Mahmud carefully, the boy back to his books, sounding out the words much like she and Mimi had done, all those years ago, when trying to understand French and only creating a tongue of their own.

With another heavy sigh, Aimée rose from her seat at the window, joining the boy who she would make an emperor, and looked at the book he read.

“Do you want help?” She asked, soft and careful, and Mahmud’s dark eyes looked at her.

Ten years ago, she had had a feeling that something had happened. Maybe this was it: the birth of her son, the birth of the man who would raise her to power, one day: not as a queen, but as a queen dowager.

“Yes please, mother.” He nodded, and Aimée lost herself in the words of a language that wasn’t her own anymore, dead just as Mimi was, just as dead as Aimée was inside.

**Author's Note:**

> so abt our girl aimée! she was this girl from martinique, who mysteriously disappeared at the sea (which is to say shes dead) BUT there are Claims shes actually valide sultana nakşidil which is wild bc lmao impossible for reasons i am not getting into, but for the fic we will be accepting that this is what happened


End file.
